"I think I got in one play against UMass in the game we blew 'em out on TV. That was about it for the year."

*****

Moore graduated from Ole Main High School in North Little Rock in June of 1975, running for more than 1000 yards his senior year. He has a unique running style--not exceptionally quick with his feet, Moore has a striding motion well-suited to outside running, and superb accelerating ability.

But freshman year, he had to share the spotlight with Ralph Polillio, a gifted wingback-type halfback. Sophmore year he failed to play much, and junior year he found himself seventh on the depth chart. But some people got hurt, and he broke a 38-yard run against Dartmouth, setting up a touchdown, and he hauled in a long pass to set up a touchdown against Brown.

*****

"People came up to me after that season and said, 'Wow, we didn't know you could do that,'" Moore continues.

"I said, hey, what do you do if you've been on the team three years and they don't know about what you can do yet. And then we get to the end of the year, and they start telling me how I was a pleasant surprise."

"Pleasant surprise?" he says, laughing incredulously. "I said, 'Didn't you know I ran the 100 in 9.6, didn't you know I weigh 190 pounds? That's odd, a pleasant surprise."

"I was never concerned that if I got in the game I could do the job. But, God, getting in the game was so hard."

Moore turns from the problems he's had with the Harvard football bureaucracy to the game itself. "Football's a very egotistical thing," he says, "you say, can I pop this guy, can I drive him out?"

"I know it's a very selfish drive that has made me play--to see if I can do it or not. If I do it, I strut around like a peacock.

"It wouldn't mean anything to me to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated with people saying, 'Wow, you're the best running back in the world,' if I knew I couldn't do it out there.

"But if I went out there and knew I could do it better than anybody, that would be very satisfying and I'd be very pleased."

*****

Wayne Moore will survive his injury--by the time he got to college, football was no longer an ultra-serious, life-or-death matter.

For the fans, all that's left of Wayne Moore's running are the memories of three great plays--against Dartmouth and Brown last year, and his miraculous, driving, 73-yard touchdown gallop in this year's Columbia opener.

His final varsity statistics read as follows: just 27 carries for 191 yards, a 7.1 yard per rush average, and one touch-down. So there are the three memories of glory, and the bitter memory of so much more that never transpired.

"If I had it to do over again, I woudn't play," Perry Wayne Moore said yesterday, not bitter, just truthful.

I, for one, disagree with that, Wayne, and I think there are other Harvard fans who feel the same way. And we thank you, so very much, for the memories you've given us.